When Leonard Everard parted from Stephen he did so with a feeling of
dissatisfaction: firstly, with Stephen; secondly, with things in general;
thirdly, with himself. The first was definite, concrete, and immediate;
he could give himself chapter and verse for all the girl's misdoing.
Everything she had said or done had touched some nerve painfully, or had
offended his feelings; and to a man of his temperament his feelings are
very sacred things, to himself.
'Why had she put him in such a ridiculous position? That was the worst
of women. They were always wanting him to do something he didn't want to
do, or crying . . . there was that girl at Oxford.'
Here he turned his head slowly, and looked round in a furtive way, which
was getting almost a habit with him. 'A fellow should go away so that he
wouldn't have to swear lies. Women were always wanting money; or worse:
to be married! Confound women; they all seemed to want him to marry
them! There was the Oxford girl, and then the Spaniard, and now
Stephen!' This put his thoughts in a new channel. He wanted money
himself. Why, Stephen had spoken of it herself; had offered to pay his
debts. Gad! it was a good idea that every one round the countryside
seemed to know his affairs. What a flat he had been not to accept her
offer then and there before matters had gone further. Stephen had lots
of money, more than any girl could want. But she didn't give him time to
get the thing fixed . . . If he had only known beforehand what she wanted
he could have come prepared . . . that was the way with women! Always
thinking of themselves! And now? Of course she wouldn't stump up after
his refusing her. What would his father say if he came to hear of it?
And he must speak to him soon, for these chaps were threatening to County
Court him if he didn't pay. Those harpies in Vere Street were quite
nasty . . . ' He wondered if he could work Stephen for a loan.
He walked on through the woodland path, his pace slower than before. 'How
pretty she had looked!' Here he touched his little moustache. 'Gad!
Stephen was a fine girl anyhow! If it wasn't for all that red hair . . .
I like 'em dark better! . . . And her being such an infernal boss!'. . .
Then he said unconsciously aloud:
'If I was her husband I'd keep her to rights!'
Poor Stephen!
'So that's what the governor meant by telling me that fortune was to be
had, and had easily, if a man wasn't a blind fool. The governor is a
starchy old party. He wouldn't speak out straight and say, "Here's
Stephen Norman, the richest girl you are ever likely to meet; why don't
you make up to her and marry her?" But that would be encouraging his son
to be a fortune-hunter! Rot! . . . And now, just because she didn't tell
me what she wanted to speak about, or the governor didn't give me a hint
so that I might be prepared, I have gone and thrown away the chance.
After all it mightn't be so bad. Stephen is a fine girl! . . . But she
mustn't ever look at me as she did when I spoke about her not obeying. I
mean to be master in my own house anyhow!
'A man mustn't be tied down too tight, even if he is married. And if
there's plenty of loose cash about it isn't hard to cover up your tracks
. . . I think I'd better think this thing over calmly and be ready when
Stephen comes at me again. That's the way with women. When a woman like
Stephen fixes her cold grey on a man she does not mean to go asleep over
it. I daresay my best plan will be to sit tight, and let her work
herself up a bit. There's nothing like a little wholesome neglect for
bringing a girl to her bearings!' . . .
For a while he walked on in satisfied self-complacency.
'Confound her! why couldn't she have let me know that she was fond of me
in some decent way, without all that formal theatrical proposing? It's a
deuced annoying thing in the long run the way the women get fond of me.
Though it's nice enough in some ways while it lasts!' he added, as if in
unwilling recognition of fact. As the path debouched on the highroad he
said to himself half aloud:
'Well, she's a mighty fine girl, anyhow! And if she is red I've had
about enough of the black! . . . That Spanish girl is beginning to kick
too! I wish I had never come across . . . '
'Shut up, you fool!' he said to himself as he walked on.
When he got home he found a letter from his father. He took it to his
room before breaking the seal. It was at least concise and to the point:
'The enclosed has been sent to me. You will have to deal with it
yourself. You know my opinion and also my intention. The items
which I have marked have been incurred since I spoke to you last about
your debts. I shall not pay another farthing for you. So take your
own course!
'JASPER EVERARD.'
The enclosed was a jeweller's bill, the length and the total of which
lengthened his face and drew from him a low whistle. He held it in his
hand for a long time, standing quite still and silent. Then drawing a
deep breath he said aloud:
'That settles it! The halter is on me! It's no use squealing. If it's
to be a red head on my pillow! . . . All right! I must only make the
best of it. Anyhow I'll have a good time to-day, even if it must be the
last!'
That day Harold was in Norcester on business. It was late when he went
to the club to dine. Whilst waiting for dinner he met Leonard Everard,
flushed and somewhat at uncertain in his speech. It was something of a
shock to Harold to see him in such a state.
Leonard was, however, an old friend, and man is as a rule faithful to
friends in this form of distress. So in his kindly feeling Harold
offered to drive him home, for he knew that he could thus keep him out of
further harm. Leonard thanked him in uncertain speech, and said he would
be ready. In the meantime he would go and play billiards with the marker
whilst Harold was having his dinner.
At ten o'clock Harold's dogcart was ready and he went to look for
Leonard, who had not since come near him. He found him half asleep in
the smoking-room, much drunker than he had been earlier in the evening.
The drive was fairly long, so Harold made up his mind for a prolonged
term of uneasiness and anxiety. The cool night-air, whose effect was
increased by the rapid motion, soon increased Leonard's somnolence and
for a while he slept soundly, his companion watching carefully lest he
should sway over and fall out of the trap. He even held him up as they
swung round sharp corners.
After a time he woke up, and woke in a nasty temper. He began to find
fault in an incoherent way with everything. Harold said little, just
enough to prevent any cause for further grievance. Then Leonard changed
and became affectionate. This mood was a greater bore than the other,
but Harold managed to bear it with stolid indifference. Leonard was this
by time making promises to do things for him, that as he was what he
called a 'goo' fell',' he might count on his help and support in the
future. As Harold knew him to be a wastrel, over head and ears in debt
and with only the succession to a small estate, he did not take much heed
to his maunderings. At last the drunken man said something which
startled him so much that he instinctively drew himself together with
such suddenness as to frighten the horse and almost make him rear up
straight.
'Woa! Woa! Steady, boy. Gently!' he said, quieting him. Then turning
to his companion said in a voice hollow with emotion and vibrant with
suppressed passion:
'What was it you said?'
Leonard, half awake, and not half of that half master of himself,
answered:
'I said I will make you agent of Normanstand when I marry Stephen.'
Harold grew cold. To hear of any one marrying Stephen was to him like
plunging him in a glacier stream; but to hear her name so lightly spoken,
and by such a man, was a bewildering shock which within a second set his
blood on fire.
'What do you mean?' he thundered. 'You marry Ste . . . Miss Norman!
You're not worthy to untie her shoe! You indeed! She wouldn't look on
the same side of the street with a drunken brute like you! How dare you
speak of her in such a way!'
'Brute!' said Leonard angrily, his vanity reaching inward to heart and
brain through all the numbing obstacle of his drunken flesh. 'Who's
brute? Brute yourself! Tell you goin' to marry Stephen, 'cos Stephen
wants it. Stephen loves me. Loves me with all her red head! Wha're you
doin'! Wha!!'
His words merged in a lessening gurgle, for Harold had now got him by the
throat.
'Take care what you say about that lady! damn you!' he said, putting his
face close the other's with eyes that blazed. 'Don't you dare to mention
her name in such a way, or you will regret it longer than you can think.
Loves you, you swine!'
The struggle and the fierce grip on his throat sobered Leonard somewhat.
Momentarily sobbed him to that point when he could be coherent and
vindictive, though not to the point where he could think ahead. Caution,
wisdom, discretion, taste, were not for him at such a moment. Guarding
his throat with both hands in an instinctive and spasmodic manner he
answered the challenge:
'Who are you calling swine? I tell you she loves me. She ought to know.
Didn't she tell me so this very day!' Harold drew back his arm to strike
him in the face, his anger too great for words. But the other, seeing
the motion and in the sobering recognition of danger, spoke hastily:
'Keep your hair on! You know so jolly much more than I do. I tell you
that she told me this and a lot more this morning when she asked me to
marry her.'
Harold's heart grew cold as ice. There is something in the sound of a
voice speaking truthfully which a true man can recognise. Through all
Leonard's half-drunken utterings came such a ring of truth; and Harold
recognised it. He felt that his voice was weak and hollow as he spoke,
thinking it necessary to give at first a sort of official denial to such
a monstrous statement:
'Liar!'
'I'm no liar!' answered Leonard. He would like to have struck him in
answer to such a word had he felt equal to it. 'She asked me to marry
her to-day on the hill above the house, where I went to meet her by
appointment. Here! I'll prove it to you. Read this!' Whilst he was
speaking he had opened the greatcoat and was fumbling in the
breast-pocket of his coat. He produced a letter which he handed to
Harold, who took it with trembling hand. By this time the reins had
fallen slack and the horse was walking quietly. There was moonlight, but
not enough to read by. Harold bent over and lifted the driving-lamp next
to him and turned it so that he could read the envelope. He could hardly
keep either lamp or paper still, his hand trembled so when he saw that
the direction was in Stephen's handwriting. He was handing it back when
Leonard said again:
'Open it! Read it! You must do so; I tell you, you must! You called me
a liar, and now must read the proof that I am not. If you don't I shall
have to ask Stephen to make you!' Before Harold's mind flashed a rapid
thought of what the girl might suffer in being asked to take part in such
a quarrel. He could not himself even act to the best advantage unless he
knew the truth . . . he took the letter from the envelope and held it
before the lamp, the paper fluttering as though in a breeze from the
trembling of his hand. Leonard looked on, the dull glare of his eyes
brightening with malignant pleasure as he beheld the other's concern. He
owed him a grudge, and by God he would pay it. Had he not been
struck--throttled--called a liar! . . .
As he read the words Harold's face cleared. 'Why, you infernal young
scoundrel!' he said angrily, 'that letter is nothing but a simple note
from a young girl to an old friend--playmate asking him to come to see
her about some trivial thing. And you construe it into a proposal of
marriage. You hound!' He held the letter whilst he spoke, heedless of
the outstretched hand of the other waiting to take it back. There was a
dangerous glitter in Leonard's eyes. He knew his man and he knew the
truth of what he had himself said, and he felt, with all the strength of
his base soul, how best he could torture him. In the very strength of
Harold's anger, in the poignancy of his concern, in the relief to his
soul expressed in his eyes and his voice, his antagonist realised the
jealousy of one who honours--and loves. Second by second Leonard grew
more sober, and more and better able to carry his own idea into act.
'Give me my letter!' he began.
'Wait!' said Harold as he put the lamp back into its socket. 'That will
do presently. Take back what you said just now!'
'What? Take back what?'
'That base lie; that Miss Norman asked you to marry her.'
Leonard felt that in a physical struggle for the possession of the letter
he would be outmatched; but his passion grew colder and more malignant,
and in a voice that cut like the hiss of a snake he spoke slowly and
deliberately. He was all sober now; the drunkenness of brain and blood
was lost, for the time, in the strength of his cold passion.
'It is true. By God it is true; every word of it! That letter, which
you want to steal, is only a proof that I went to meet her on Caester
Hill by her own appointment. When I got there, she was waiting for me.
She began to talk about a chalet there, and at first I didn't know what
she meant--'
There was such conviction, such a triumphant truth in his voice, that
Harold was convinced.
'Stop!' he thundered; 'stop, don't tell me anything. I don't want to
hear. I don't want to know.' He covered his face with his hands and
groaned. It was not as though the speaker were a stranger, in which case
he would have been by now well on in his death by strangulation; he had
known Leonard all his life, and he was a friend of Stephen's. And he was
speaking truth.
The baleful glitter of Leonard's eyes grew brighter still. He was as a
serpent when he goes to strike. In this wise he struck.
'I shall not stop. I shall go on and tell you all I choose. You have
called me liar--twice. You have also called me other names. Now you
shall hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And if
you won't listen to me some one else will.' Harold groaned again;
Leonard's eyes brightened still more, and the evil smile on his face grew
broader as he began more and more to feel his power. He went on to speak
with a cold deliberate malignancy, but instinctively so sticking to
absolute truth that he could trust himself to hurt most. The other
listened, cold at heart and physically; his veins and arteries seemed
stagnant.
'I won't tell you anything of her pretty embarrassments; how her voice
fell as she pleaded; how she blushed and stammered. Why, even I, who am
used to women and their pretty ways and their passions and their
flushings and their stormy upbraidings, didn't quite know for a while
what she was driving at. So at last she spoke out pretty plainly, and
told me what a fond wife she'd make me if I would only take her!' Harold
said nothing; he only rocked a little as one in pain, and his hands fell.
The other went on:
'That is what happened this morning on Caester Hill under the trees where
I met Stephen Norman by her own appointment; honestly what happened. If
you don't believe me now you can ask Stephen. My Stephen!' he added in a
final burst of venom as in a gleam of moonlight through a rift in the
shadowy wood he saw the ghastly pallor of Harold's face. Then he added
abruptly as he held out his hand:
'Now give me my letter!'
In the last few seconds Harold had been thinking. And as he had been
thinking for the good, the safety, of Stephen, his thoughts flew swift
and true. This man's very tone, the openness of his malignity, the
underlying scorn when he spoke of her whom others worshipped, showed him
the danger--the terrible immediate danger in which she stood from such a
man. With the instinct of a mind working as truly for the woman he loved
as the needle does to the Pole he spoke quietly, throwing a sneer into
the tone so as to exasperate his companion--it was brain against brain
now, and for Stephen's sake:
'And of course you accepted. You naturally would!' The other fell into
the trap. He could not help giving an extra dig to his opponent by
proving him once more in the wrong.
'Oh no, I didn't! Stephen is a fine girl; but she wants taking down a
bit. She's too high and mighty just at present, and wants to boss a chap
too much. I mean to be master in my own house; and she's got to begin as
she will have to go on. I'll let her wait a bit: and then I'll yield by
degrees to her lovemaking. She's a fine girl, for all her red head; and
she won't be so bad after all!'
Harold listened, chilled into still and silent amazement. To hear
Stephen spoken of in such a way appalled him. She of all women! . . .
Leonard never knew how near sudden death he was, as he lay back in his
seat, his eyes getting dull again and his chin sinking. The drunkenness
which had been arrested by his passion was reasserting itself. Harold
saw his state in time and arrested his own movement to take him by the
throat and dash him to the ground. Even as he looked at him in scornful
hate, the cart gave a lurch and Leonard fell forward. Instinctively
Harold swept an arm round him and held him up. As he did so the
unconsciousness of arrested sleep came; Leonard's chin sank on his breast
and he breathed stertorously.
As he drove on, Harold's thoughts circled in a tumult. Vague ideas of
extreme measures which he ought to take flashed up and paled away.
Intention revolved upon itself till its weak side was exposed, and, it
was abandoned. He could not doubt the essential truth of Leonard's
statement regarding the proposal of marriage. He did not understand this
nor did he try to. His own love for the girl and the bitter awaking to
its futility made him so hopeless that in his own desolation all the
mystery of her doing and the cause of it was merged and lost.
His only aim and purpose now was her safety. One thing at least he could
do: by fair means or foul stop Leonard's mouth, so that others need not
know her shame! He groaned aloud as the thought came to him. Beyond
this first step he could do nothing, think of nothing as yet. And he
could not take this first step till Leonard had so far sobered that he
could understand.
And so waiting for that time to come, he drove on through the silent
night.